


Under My Skin, The World

by Moonknife



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Also a fairly slow burn so don't freak out about a lack of kissing, And Claire manages that shit, And Foggy and Marci are amazing, And Karen Page didn't put up much of a fight either, And Karen's backstory is revealed and of course it's a shitshow, And Matt is like wtf is going on?, And maybe a roadtrip to Vermont too, But there are no goddamn ninjas, F/M, Here is the story, Of how Frank Castle didn't even really try, and more - Freeform, eventually, there will be kissing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:29:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6400243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonknife/pseuds/Moonknife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank Castle resolved never to feel anything other than rage, fury, and hatred. But then he met Karen Page, and all of those resolutions went right out the window. He tries to stay away, but when it looks like Karen's latest story for the Bulletin has attracted the wrong kind of attention, Frank shows up in her life again. But this time, he won't find it so easy to walk away. Features the Truth About Karen, Frank Castle's Hidden Depths, Matt Murdock Ruining Everything, and Foggy and Claire's Sane and Centered Mental Health Tips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eye in the Sky (Frank)

**Author's Note:**

> This story was beta'd by the unbelievable partlygood, and if you haven't read her stuff, you are only living at 96% potential. This is my attempt at a multi-chapter story that stays true to the tone of the show but focuses on Karen, Frank, and the mystery of Karen's past. I plan to update once a week, and hopefully I can stick to that.

It’s been six weeks since he helped Red fight those ninjas on the rooftop, six weeks since Karen looked at him and said his name. He hadn’t heard her voice, not really, but he knew she’d said it. He was glad he hadn’t been close to her. He needed her far away. She confused him, made him wonder if he was doing the right thing by turning his back on the life he thought he could have.

 

Because he’d suspected all along he wasn’t supposed to live like other men, with a wife and a family and a white picket fence. He’d known deep down, hadn’t he? First time he picked up a gun, he’d only been eighteen but it had felt _right_. And the colonel had said as much after his basic marksman training. You’ve got a gift, the colonel had said. What a body count you’re going to have.

 

A body count, the colonel had said. And he’d been right, hadn’t he? Three tours later and he’d barely known his own children. He just couldn’t stop fighting. Maria had gotten used to living without him. Sometimes he wondered whether she ever saw other men while he was fighting in the armpit of the Earth, but he couldn’t get angry about the possibility. She’d asked him once, after he came back from Iraq and before Kandahar, if maybe the third tour could be the last. If maybe he could use the G.I. Bill and go back to school for something. Maybe become a vet. He always did like animals.

 

Maria was giving him a chance, and he had known it then. She was saying, stay here and be the man your children deserve. And he had nodded and then gone out to the shed to work on a rocking horse for Lisa, and they had both known he wasn’t going to leave the Marines. He expected to die out there, with “there” being wherever they sent him to kill next, and Maria expected it too. She’d screamed at him, railed at him, begged him to think of Lisa and Frankie instead of the Corps, just once. And then _she’d_ died, not him. They’d all died, not him.

 

It had to be the universe telling him loud and clear: this was never your destiny, Frank. So he’d gone along, blowing up the house and all the memories that lived there, memories of letting down his family and feeling like he was acting out another man’s life when he held them in his arms. Now he was the Punisher and the whole world knew it. No one would make the mistake of loving him again, and he would keep his heart beating, but as bulletproof as his body armor.

 

He just had to stay away from Karen Page. It drove him crazy how she had a thing for Red and that stupid kung fu bastard had just lied and lied to her. Frank never would have told Karen to hold onto her feelings for Murdock that night at the diner if he’d known then that the guy was fucking _Daredevil_. He’d imagined when he’d told her to grab her love for Red with two hands and never let it go that she would end up married to a lawyer, living safe upstate, not getting her heart stomped on by a costumed hypocrite with a savior complex.

 

Goddammit. Frank didn’t want Karen to get hurt, not unless it was for something she wanted and deserved. Matt Murdock might be what she wanted, but he wasn’t even the same stratosphere as things she deserved.

 

So now it’s been six months since Frank has seen her, her face like a painting of an angel, and he’s thinking about fixing that even though he knows it’s easier for them both if he stays away. He’s been waging a war on what’s left of the Kitchen Irish and the cartel, both of whom are moving heroin and pills through the Kitchen. He’s been working with a hacker, Micro (or Linus, when Frank is annoyed with him), an admittedly weird ex-Quantico guy he met on a special assignment in Berlin. Micro gets him the tech and the hardware to take on the gangs effectively, even though that tech and hardware forces Frank to be more methodical that he would like.

 

What Frank would like is to kill them all.

 

Kill them all, way before any of them could ever cross paths with Karen, that’s for fucking sure. So he had Micro put 24-hour surveillance on the closet Karen calls an apartment. At first, he hadn’t wanted to look at the feed himself and he’d made Micro give him reports every few days. And then one day he’d walked into the old warehouse he and Micro were using as home base, to find the little weasel watching Karen get undressed on one of the security footage monitors.

 

Frank had never experienced a rage so hot, and it had risen up in him so fast. His vision had gone white. Whatever Micro had seen on Frank’s face must have scared the shit out of him, since the smaller man had practically leapt out of his chair and immediately scrambled behind the monitors with his hands up, yelling “She lives in a studio apartment, Frank! What do you want me to do? The camera picks up every fucking thing, okay?”

 

After that, only Frank watches the feeds from Karen’s place, even though he knows doing it this way makes the surveillance basically useless. She’s only home early and the morning and late in the evenings, but the Punisher pulls long hours, and sometimes he goes a full day before he can check in on her. And yes, sometimes she undresses. When that happens, he looks away.

 

Not always fast enough, though. Karen Page is a beautiful woman. And brave, and strong, and relentless, and tough, and when he thinks about the footage he’s seen of her crying on her bed, he wants to punch Red in the face until the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen has a one-way ticket back to the underworld.

 

But he’s also noticed some strange activity around her apartment. He thinks he knows why. He reads her articles in the _Bulletin_ every morning while he’s drinking his coffee, and she’s been writing a string of pieces about a new crime boss operating in Alphabet City, someone with connections to the mayor’s office. It’s exactly the kind of hard-hitting journalism that Karen Page is developing a name for, and exactly the kind of story that could start a political shitstorm that might make people in high places start to take notice. Frank admires Karen for writing these stories.

 

He admires her, and he wants to kidnap her and take her to some far off place with no ninjas or crime bosses or fucking Daredevil, where she could find a nice husband who would worship her like the fucking amazing woman she is.

 

But he suspects that if he tried to get her away that she would find a way to blindside him and return to New York to keep fighting the good fight. She just can’t leave well enough alone. And since he can’t leave well enough alone either, he isn’t really in a position to tell her to knock it off.

 

Still, he watched the same black car circle her apartment building again and again, and watched the same men in black suits walk the block she lived on again and again, and it’s bothering him. He needs to see her, to tell her about what’s going on. He would send Micro, but Micro is a creep. Karen would probably mace his oddball sidekick, and while Frank wouldn’t blame her, he needs Micro in one piece.

 

He considers telling Red for approximately two seconds before he realizes that he’s clenching his fists so tight his knuckles are white. No. He would not tell Red because Red is an idiot.

 

Frank will tell Karen himself. He will go to see her, let her know that there is some strange shit going on and that she needs to watch her back. He will not tell her that sometimes he follows her home from work. He will certainly not tell her that sometimes, when he’s walking twenty paces behind her, the muggy New York air carries the scent of her shampoo to him. It makes him remember being close to her, when she trusted him. When he had told her everything. Almost everything. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from doing it.

 

Karen is the weak spot in his armor. And he has tried to keep her at a distance, he has. But now he needs to get near, just one more time. Once he knows she’s safe, he will leave her alone for good.

 

But first, he will tell her.

 

He is standing outside her door.


	2. Inquiring Minds (Karen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen doesn't know how to feel when Frank shows up at her door. On the one hand, he hasn't spoken to her since killing Schoonover and it turns out he's been watching her. On the other hand...it's Frank. Not the Punisher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the incandescent partlygood.

 

When Karen was a little girl, her father used to tell her stories. He would wait until bedtime, until Karen and Kevin were tucked together into one of their beds and the Vermont moon was heavy outside the window. Paxton Page made those stories up himself, complete with different voices and descriptions so vivid it was as though he had just been in that place and was telling his children what he’d seen.

 

Yeah, her dad was a great storyteller. Later, after he went crazy, he used those stories against Karen and Kevin, tried to make them believe things that weren’t true. Things that couldn’t be true ( _they’re following me, Karen. I can see them. They’re everywhere)_. But Karen always felt like she needed to defend him, to try to figure out whether some of the things he was saying weren’t just ramblings. Kevin warned his sister about her savior complex. Kevin…

 

But Karen doesn’t want to think about Kevin. She’s been doing better with keeping away thoughts of him, of Mom, and of Vermont. She still has half of the bottle of whiskey she bought two weeks ago.

 

The job at the _Bulletin_ keeps her steady. She has to stay alert to track down sources, run down leads, and meet her deadlines. She likes being a reporter, and she’s good at it.

 

She always did love those stories. Especially the scary ones, the ones that made Kevin squirm.

 

She still likes the scary ones. Like the story she’s working on now, about the women and children disappearing from low income housing in Alphabet City. The story had started as a straight up eviction piece—one more fat cat in the mayor’s office throwing his tenants out to renovate the buildings and try to sell them to wealthy gentrifiers. But like many stories in Hell’s Kitchen, what seemed to be a straightforward tale of greed swiftly took a turn for the weird.

 

It turns out that in addition to worrying about being thrown out of their apartments, the residents of Crown Towers were wondering where their teenaged children were going. In the past year, nearly a dozen kids had disappeared from that apartment complex and one other, M Street Gardens. The police had shown absolutely no interest in treating those missing kids as anything other than runaways.

 

Karen paces what passes for a living room in her tiny apartment. She probably could have afforded a legitimate one-bedroom place, but she likes this neighborhood. And it was close to Union Allied Construction’s offices, although that didn’t matter anymore. She’s been home for about half an hour, but she still hasn’t ordered food or changed out of her pencil skirt and blouse.

 

It keeps occurring to her to do these things, but then listening to the tapes distracts her.

 

She went to one of the apartment buildings today and knocked on doors until she found someone who would talk to her: Anna Guerra, forty-seven, single mother of two with a job at the mailroom of Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Her son and daughter vanished on the same day three months ago, and the police chalked it up to “teens will be teens,” or whatever bullshit reason justifies doing nothing to find the Guerra siblings.

 

When Karen knocked on Ms. Guerra’s door, the older woman let her in, made her coffee, and agreed to speak on tape. For all of her hospitality, Anna’s eyes were dull, and her fingernails were chewed to the quick. Karen tried not to stare at the photos of the Guerra kids on the walls. There were so many.

 

“I’ll talk to you,” Anna said. “ I don’t care. I’ve already lost everything.”

 

Now, Karen sits down on the edge of her bed and opens a manila folder. Inside are the high school portraits of the Guerra kids: Stephanie and Victor, both 15. Fraternal twins.

 

Just like Karen and Kevin. But they look more alike than she and Kevin did. Until she was in her twenties, Karen had been painfully skinny and so pale next to her golden god of a brother. Her perfect, wonderful brother.

 

Half a bottle of whiskey.

 

 _No._ She gets up and starts pacing again. The tape is still playing, so Karen focuses on Ms. Guerra’s words.

 

“They’re good kids, you know? They would never run away. They love school, especially Stephanie. She was such a good student, and she loved sports. Especially soccer and swimming. She wanted to play professional soccer, on one of those women’s teams, you know? I told her…”

 

There’s a knock at the door. The delivery guy? No, she keeps forgetting to order food. Her eyes dart to her chest of drawers, where her .380 rests under her sweaters. But if whoever they are has come to kill her, would they knock?

 

Karen swallows and opens the door. On the other side is Frank Castle.

 

He’s not wearing his now famous skull-emblazoned armored vest, nor is he carrying a Gatling gun. He’s in a dark t-shirt, jeans, and a cotton jacket. He looks…normal. No bruises, no blood. Just Frank.

 

“Hey,” she says. She’s actually imagined this moment so many times, and in each version she comes up with, she makes him feel like the asshole he is for completely ignoring her since killing Schoonover. She either says the perfect thing to make him see how much he hurt her, or else she decks him. Now that he’s here, looking like a regular guy, no words come. She doesn’t really feel like hitting him, either.

 

“Hey,” he replies, and Karen laughs. It’s only a little bitter.

 

“Wow,” she says. “Small talk isn’t our thing. Come on in.” She stands aside so he can walk into her place. The last time he was here someone opened fire on them with a machine gun. It took the super weeks to fix her windows.

 

It’s funny, but even though the two of them are the same height, he seems to fill up the space in a way no one else can. In jail, in a courtroom, in a diner, wherever he is, Frank seems to dominate his surroundings.

 

Karen sighs. Whatever kind of weird relationship they had before, he made it perfectly clear ( _I’m already dead_ ) that’s it’s over. No point wondering about how he’s been, why he hasn’t reached out, or pondering the mysteries of his presence.

 

“Let me guess,” she says. “I’m in danger.”

 

Frank’s lips quirk. Was that almost a smile? But before she can smile back at him, he looks away and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Now he seems almost…nervous?

 

“Look, Karen, I know we haven’t spoken in, uh, awhile. And I know you probably aren’t happy to see me…”

 

Isn't she? Karen couldn’t really say if she’s happy to see him or not. More than anything, she feels relieved. Relieved to know that he isn't completely the Punisher. How could he be, if he came to her apartment to warn her? The Punisher doesn't care about anything but his revenge. So Frank Castle isn’t really dead after all.

 

“…But I think you are in danger. Real danger that you can’t talk your way out of. And I came to warn you and to tell you that you should, you know, lie low for a while. Just for a week or so. I’ll take care of these guys.”

 

Wait, what? “Frank, what the hell are you talking about?” Karen puts her hands on her hips, anger rising. “What do you mean, you’ll take care of these guys? What guys?”

 

Frank seems to be making a careful study of her floor lamp. “I don’t know who they are, yet, but I’ve seen some guys in black casing your building, driving around, maybe checking doorman schedules. I think something’s up because of those articles you’ve been writing about the…”

“Wait. A. Minute.” Karen takes a step closer to Frank, who finally looks her in the eye. He’s actually handsome without the signs of a brutal beating on his face. Too bad he’s such an asshole. “How do you know this? I haven’t seen anything and this building has security. Who told you that there are guys watching my place?”

 

Frank shrugs. “Technically I was watching your place, not you. But, uh, this place is a shitbox and you may have wandered into the frame a few times. The Blacksmith tried to take you out here, Karen. If you insist on staying here, I’m going to be watching.”

 

“Watching in person or watching with cameras?” Karen’s voice is calm, even. She suspects that Frank was married long enough to know just how much danger her calm, even voice portends.

 

The look on his face confirms it. She wonders if anyone at the paper would believe it if she told them she could scare the Punisher. Well, maybe he isn't scared, exactly. But he's giving her door some seriously longing looks. “Both.”

 

There is a long silence.

 

Half a bottle of whiskey.

 

When she speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper. “It stops, now.”

 

Frank holds up a hand. “Karen…”

 

“You don’t have the right to look out for me, Frank.” Karen turns and walks into the kitchen. The highball glasses are in the cupboard to the right of the sink. She pulls one out. The whiskey is on the counter, all the way in the corner, almost hidden behind the mixer. She gets it, pours a finger of liquor into the glass. Takes a sip. It burns.

 

When she turns, Frank is in the kitchen too. He’s standing too close to her.

 

“I hear what you’re saying. There are people watching me. When will people not be watching me?” Karen takes another sip. “I can’t run anytime things look bad, Frank. If I do that, I’ll always be running.”

 

Frank opens his mouth but Karen shakes her head.

 

“I’ll stay with Foggy and Marci for a few days, but that’s it. You can do whatever you want. Investigate those guys, stand on a rooftop and shoot them, whatever. I don’t care. And do you know why I don’t care, Frank?”

 

He gives her a wary look but says nothing.

 

“Because you don’t really care about me. You don’t give a shit about me. The only reason you’re watching my place is because deep down, you think maybe Schoonover wasn’t really the Blacksmith, or at least wasn’t the end of that chain, and you think whoever he was working with might come back here. Finish the job. Right?”

 

“No.” Frank looks like he’s getting angry now, too. _Good_. “There’s no reason for anyone associated with Schoonover to come back here. The only reason he came after you was to protect his secret, but you figured it out anyway. I have eyes on you because I worry about you, Karen. You write these stories and they’re good, they’re important. But they’re also fucking dangerous. You are making powerful people angry, and that can have consequences. So people might try to take you out.”

 

He gets closer. Karen can’t look away from his eyes. He’s so furious now they’re practically glowing.

 

“But let me tell you something: that’s not going to happen. Anybody who comes after you will have to go through me first, and you know what? They will lose. I will end each and every one of them. But I have to know they’re coming, Karen. I have to fucking know, okay? So yeah, I have eyes on you. If something happened to you…”

 

_You’ll what?_

 

But Karen isn’t so sure she likes where this conversation is going. “Okay.” She takes another drink of whiskey and puts the glass on the counter. “Okay, I’m sorry. I guess…” She inhales, feeling the alcohol warming in her belly. “I guess I’m still angry with you for disappearing. And for Schoonover.”

 

“I had to kill him, Karen.” His hands are back in his pockets. “He took my family from me.”

 

Karen nods. There’s no argument to that. “I don’t like you watching me, but I get the feeling I can’t talk you out of it. And I’ll stay with Foggy and Marci, or maybe I can find a hotel room. For a week, maybe.”

 

“You’ll stay with me.”

 

 


End file.
